Pioneers & Innovators

Our team has been building AI and advanced
cloud technologies for more than two decades.

This time we’re taking things to a whole new level.

Discovery Pioneers > Tech Innovators > AI Leaders

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Innovation Backed by Experience

Founded in 2019, Merlin Search Technologies represents the culmination of over two decades of legal technology innovation. While our company is relatively new, our team brings over two decades’ experience developing industry-leading discovery software that continues to serve many of the world’s largest corporations and law firms.

During those years, we pioneered such innovations as Secure Cloud Hosting, Multi-Language Discovery, and Continuous Active Learning for Technology Assisted Review.

A New Approach to Discovery

DiscoveryPartner, our flagship platform, reimagines how legal teams interact with data. By integrating generative AI with advanced cloud technologies, we’ve created a solution that makes document analysis and review significantly faster and more cost-effective.

Our innovation extends beyond software features:

  • Single-tenant architecture that provides enhanced security through complete data isolation
  • Cloud utility pricing that can reduce hosting costs by up to 60%
  • Industry-first green computing initiative that aligns technology with sustainability

Backed by Expert Leadership

Our team is supported by an advisory board that brings together leading minds in technology and law, including:

  • Former CTO of the CIA
  • Former Chief of Search at Wells Fargo
  • Former CIA cyber and cloud architect
  • Leading law professor and former trial lawyer
  • MIT Venture Mentoring Services advisor

Looking Forward

As we continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible in legal technology, our focus remains constant: delivering practical, powerful solutions that help legal professionals work more effectively. We’re committed to ongoing innovation that serves the real-world needs of our clients while maintaining the highest standards of security and ethical AI implementation.

We started out with a single question:

“How can we transform the process of finding, analyzing,
and reporting on information in large document sets?”


Our goal wasn't improvement, but a radical transformation—achieving a thousandfold improvement in speed, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Discovery Pioneers for Over Two Decades.

(We still have the T-Shirts.)

The Early Days

In the early 1990s, John Tredennick saw an opportunity that others missed. As a trial lawyer and partner at a national law firm, he recognized that Internet technology could transform how lawyers manage digital information and meet the emerging challenges of electronic discovery. Rather than wait for the market to catch up, he assembled an in-house team to develop a web-based litigation system. What started as an internal solution soon caught the attention of other law firms seeking to streamline their discovery processes.

Founding Catalyst

This early success led to the creation of Catalyst Repository Systems in 2000, marking the beginning of a new era in ediscovery technology. Under John’s leadership, Catalyst grew into a global operation with more than 160 people and offices across the U.S., Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Seoul, serving many of the world’s leading corporations and law firms.

The Catalyst team pioneered several transformative innovations:

  • One of the first cloud-based ediscovery platforms
  • Multi-language software handling complex scripts including CJK, Arabic, and Hebrew
  • Introduction of Continuous Active Learning (CAL) in 2012, which set the industry standard for technology-assisted review known as TAR 2.0

The Birth of Merlin

When Catalyst was acquired by an international technology company in 2019, John saw another opportunity. Convinced that AI and cloud technologies could radically transform the discovery process, he founded Merlin Search Technologies.

The new venture brought together an exceptional team:

  • Senior developers from the original Catalyst team (now approaching 20)
  • Dr. William Webber, a leading international AI scientist from Melbourne
  • Key executives including the former Catalyst CFO
  • Industry veterans like the VP of Litigation and Legal Operations from Fiserv

Together, they’re pursuing an ambitious vision: fundamentally transforming how legal teams handle investigations and discovery through the power of AI and advanced cloud technologies.

Merlin’s technology revolutionizes ediscovery, blending algorithmic search with LLMs’ analytical power. It provides not just results, but also their analysis, replacing long scrolls and doubtful sources with rapid, confirmed answers.

From our Founder

Welcome to Merlin, the third chapter in my professional journey. I spent the first 20 years as a trial lawyer and partner in a national law firm, where I wrote the book on using computers in litigation (“Winning with Computers”) and was named a top five  ediscovery pioneer by American Lawyer.

I then founded and spent another 20 years running Catalyst Repository Systems. During that time, we pioneered multi-language ediscovery—focusing on the more challenging Asian, Arabic and Cyrillic languages. We also designed and developed the first Continuous Active learning (CAL) algorithm on the market. During those years we were honored to provide ediscovery systems for some of the largest companies and law firms in the world.

Following the sale of Catalyst in 2019, I founded Merlin Search Technologies to take discovery to a whole new level, combining the speed and analytical capabilities of AI with modern cloud technologies

We are passionate about building software for the next era for investigations and discovery–one that combines new ways to find, analyze and report on information in large document sets, with an all-cloud architecture that provides enhanced speed, security and cost savings!

Re>Imagining Discovery for the AI Era

When we founded Merlin, we saw an opportunity to fundamentally transform how legal teams work with digital information. Rather than adapt legacy software, we started fresh with three core principles:

  • Build natively in the cloud to harness its full capabilities
  • Integrate AI directly into the platform architecture
  • Create a flexible foundation for continuous innovation

The result is DiscoveryPartner, a platform that brings together advanced cloud computing and sophisticated AI to make legal discovery faster, easier, and more cost-effective.

Technology That Makes a Difference

Our platform stands apart through its innovative integration of cloud and AI technologies:

  • Multiple AI models working together to optimize different tasks
  • Advanced analysis of complex file types including transcripts and chat
  • Cloud-native architecture delivering superior security and scalability
  • Utility pricing that reduces costs while supporting sustainability

Looking Forward

We continue pushing boundaries in two key areas:

  1. Cloud Innovation: We’re maximizing cloud capabilities to enhance performance while maintaining the highest security standards. Our unique single-tenant architecture provides enhanced data protection while enabling utility pricing that can reduce hosting costs by up to 60%.
  2. AI Development: We’re expanding our AI capabilities through sophisticated algorithms and GenAI integration. Our platform can analyze documents, create timelines, and generate investigation reports in minutes rather than days.

The future of legal discovery is here. We invite you to experience how DiscoveryPartner can helo transform your investigation and discovery practice.

We are witnessing the dawn of a new era for ediscovery applications. For the first time, clients can use the cloud the way it was meant to be used and realize cost savings through Cloud Utility Pricing.

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